


Sarvaga

by avani



Category: Baahubali (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-17 01:24:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12354534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/pseuds/avani
Summary: A ghost story, in five parts.





	Sarvaga

Bijjaladeva, of all people, first brings it to the King’s attention that the palace is haunted. 

He very nearly does not, as Shivu’s initial impulse is to refuse to see him. He can’t imagine what his damnable great-uncle might want from him, unless it is to creak out another complaint or voice a request for more wine. But a king lacks a peasant’s luxury to decline the company of those he despises, and eventually Shivu gives in. 

His single concession to spite is to require Bijjaladeva to wait in line amongst the commoners who seek a favor from the King, which means it's almost midday before Bijjaladeva is brought before the throne. To Shivu’s surprise, the wretch persists: his eyes roll with agitation, his hair and mustache droop. 

He says: “I have seen him.” 

“Who?” Shivu asks before he can think better of it. A trap, always a trap, with this man and his son; Shivu’s father and grandmother might have been taken in, but never him. Wiser not even to let him begin to spin his web to lure the unwary. 

Bijjaladeva fixes him with a baleful eye. “You know who, boy. Why else would you have let me live?” 

_Because,_ Shivu wants to say, _you asked me, bound and broken, what my father would have done in my place, and then I had no other choice._ That is no answer befitting of a sovereign, only a scared child. 

“Because my word is the law,” Shivu says instead, his only resort, he’s found, when he has no other explanation to offer. He uses it more often than he wants to admit. “It is best not to challenge it.” 

Though: “I see him,” Bijjaladeva repeats urgently. “I see him, at night, in the moonlight, and he laughs at me. He laughs, because he knows that he has won and I have lost.” 

“Who do you see?” Shivu asks, his throat tightening suddenly. 

Even so little a concession makes Bijjaladeva’s mouth twist with malevolent pleasure. “He has no need to appear before me,” he drawls, “not when you are there, his mirror, born to complete his mission and ensure my misery. Or is it that he finds your efforts unsatisfactory?” 

A mistake to betray even so much; Shivu looks away.“You drink too much, old man. If you have nothing more to offer this court than wild ravings dreamed up while in your cups, then begone.” 

Even after so clear a dismissal, Bijjaladeva dares defy his king and remain a moment longer. “He’ll laugh at me again tonight,” he says, a note of real fear creeping into his voice. “He will not let me be.” 

“Enough,” says Shivu, heart heavy, and gestures to the guards. 

* 

Avantika laughs at him. 

“There’s no such thing as _ghosts_ ,” she says between giggles—and. Another surprise; he hadn’t known she was even capable of giggling. 

He doesn’t know many things about her, or her about him, or both of them about themselves. So his royal mother reminded them in private the night before she decreed that the kingdom would commemorate a year of mourning for those lost following the coronation rather than celebrate the expected wedding. 

“If,” his royal mother added, “at the end of that year, the two of you should still wish to wed, then so shall it be. And should your hearts say otherwise, then know that you both will have equal claim to my love regardless. But you are both so very young still, and so much has changed for you in so short a time. I would have you find yourselves before you must worry about finding each other.” 

All perfectly reasonable, but a lifetime of petty defiance compelled Shivu to point out: “Wasn’t my father even younger than I am when he met you?” 

“Your father,” replied his royal mother, a fond smile softening her face, “was different.” 

Shivu fell silent. 

So Avantika takes the position of royal messenger instead of Queen. It suits her, Shivu thinks. A lifetime confined to the area surrounding the Kuntalan rebels’ hideout has left her with a taste for travel, another thing he did not know. She loves the river, is fascinated by fish, and doesn’t mind carrying countless communications back and forth between him and his parents. She never forgets a word of the messages she must commit to memory; she never stares or sneers when his voice cracks or his eyes burn in response to the reassurances his parents send up the river with her. 

What she will do, apparently, is laugh at him when he tells her of Bijjaladeva’s wild claims. 

“I know that,” Shivu says, feeling himself flush. “I do. It was only—“ 

“Besides,” Avantika goes on, “even were the honored Baahubali to return, it wouldn’t be as anything so ridiculous as a restless spirit. If anyone would have attained the heavens, it would be he; he would want to be one with lightning strikes and storm clouds.” 

An echo, Shivu is sure, of the words his uncle would have taught her; but unfair, unfair, that she should speak with such certainty of what his father would want when that should be his right. He should be the one to acquaint her with his father, not the other way around. 

“You can feel his presence, I think.” Avantika’s eyes are wide and reverent. “Sometimes, alone on the plains, in the instant before thunder, that sharp clear scent, that sudden calm: that must be what it is to be protected. That must be what it is to have a father.” 

Her voice is wistful, and Shivu remembers that she is an orphan, too. He cannot begrudge her the comfort she derives from such a thing; what he can envy is her certainty, always. 

* 

His royal mother developed a reputation for madness in the years before his return. At first Shivu dismisses this as nonsense. Bhallaladeva had done his best to malign Shivu’s royal mother by any means possible, after all, and whenever she takes her seat in court, she seems in possession of all her mental faculties. 

If it reaches his ears occasionally that she has a habit of talking to thin air, well, then, twenty-five years of imprisonment entitle anyone to a bit of odd behavior. 

So he believes until the evening he must bring yet another letter to her to be read. 

It isn’t that he’s illiterate, exactly; Mother had forced him to learn how to read as a boy, in hopes that it would distract him from the lure of the waterfall. But he never had much patience for it, and any progress he makes now is painfully slow. It does not help that upon his ascendance to the throne, all neighboring monarchs feel the need to send elaborate missives both congratulating him and making their expectations for his reign clear. 

His royal mother scans the letter once to make sure it contains nothing that must be addressed immediately. Then she hands it back to him and sits in silence as he sounds the words out painstakingly, stomach clenching in shame that he cannot be the son she would have wanted, the man she and her husband would have raised. 

“That was much improved,” is all she says when he finishes. She smiles encouragingly at him, and for an instant, he imagines himself the child he would have been in another world, desperate to do anything for her approval. 

He means only to thank her and leave, but instead he blurts out: “Why do you have so much so much faith in me?” 

The Queen Mother Devasena, who believed that he would survive against all odds, that he would find his way to her without any direction, who burned for years in the quiet confidence that he would defeat Bhallaladeva, meets his gaze calmly. 

“Because,” she tells him, “of the faith I have always had in your father.” 

Which could mean nothing more than her confidence that his father’s blood runs true in his veins, of course. But she alone among all others had shown not the slightest surprise that he went by _Shivu_ rather than _Mahendra_ ; had laughed instead of looking shocked when Mother had described his multiple failed attempts to climb the waterfall; had run out to him when he’d come to free her as though already expecting him. 

“She speaks to a man who isn’t there,” the maidservant had told him, frightened and faltering. “She speaks when she thinks we are not listening.” 

His royal mother must know what he suspects, but her expression remains utterly unapologetic. Even as he watches, her shoulders relax; her face brightens. And her eyes—her eyes seem to look through him at something—at someone—only she can see. 

Shivu shivers and excuses himself. 

* 

Kattappa has lived in the palace for decades; if anyone would know if it harbors a propensity for phantoms, it would be he. 

He seems to think the question a joke, though. “Your father was the same way,” Kattappa says jovially. “Have I told you how he convinced his brother for months on end that the north wing of the palace was haunted by the ghosts of their unwed great-great-aunts?” He pauses. “Not that I knew anything about it, of course. Baahu’s mischief was entirely of his own doing.” 

He beams: an expression of conspiratorial glee not meant for Shivu at all. Such a thing has occurred more and more often in the months since their victory. Shivu dreads the day Kattappa will hold out his hands to him and call out only, _Baahu_. 

“No, Grandfather,” he says firmly. “There have been—whispers. Have there been any others, before?” 

Kattappa’s eyes clear; he looks at Shivu with sudden lucidity. “If you mean to ask if Baahu walks amongst us still—“ Shivu sucks in a breath “—then assuredly the answer is yes.” 

“That’s not possible,” Shivu tells him, voice thick. “It’s not.” 

“Isn’t it?” Kattappa places a comforting hand on Shivu’s shoulder. “Perhaps not. I can tell you, though, what is possible: that time after time in battle when I found myself almost taken by surprise, almost defeated and killed, I felt instead a hand on my elbow warning me just in time, a weapon missing its mark when it should not have done so.” 

“Luck.” 

“—Could only do so much, least of all for a sinner who doesn’t deserve it.” Looking at Shivu, Kattappa adds. “Think of it as you please, Mahendra. I choose to believe that it is my Baahu telling me that he forgives me.” 

* 

Eventually Shivu accepts that his father’s presence, so clear to everyone else around him, will forever be denied him. It might only be repayment for how long it had taken his father to feel his kicks while Shivu was still in his mother’s womb; or maybe it is their shared fate, father and son alike, to just miss each other. Perhaps it might be better this way; why force his father to share in the disappointment everyone else feels even beyond the borders of death? 

Shivu is brooding on such a subject in the southern wing when he looks up to see his own reflection standing before him—or, no, not quite. 

His father is as tall as he, if rather broader; his features are formed in the same way, his hair as thick. All this Shivu knows to expect. But no one had told him how wide his father’s grin would be, how careless the set of his shoulders. No one had thought to warn him that he would have kind eyes. 

“Father,” Shivu manages to croak at last, and the man before him smiles and opens his mouth to reply. 

Shivu leans closer, suddenly certain he will never hear anything more important as long as he lives. In these words he can know his father’s hopes and dreams and expectations of him— 

_“Amma jaagardey,”_ says Baahubali gently. That is all. 

Shivu blinks, eyes suddenly burning. “Certainly I will,” he says: far too formal a response, but Shivu can’t bring himself to worry about or fear anything around this man, least of all his innumerable blunders. 

_That must be what it is to have a father,_ Avantika said. Privately he agrees. 

”Don’t go,” Shivu begs. He knows the answer without needing to hear it; a stupid question, anyway. 

Still. His father’s face doesn’t twist with disgust or disappointment, but his expression turns wistful. 

That’s all right, Shivu tells himself. His father, once found, will never leave him. Not where it really matters. 

Still. He does not look away until the apparition fades.

**Author's Note:**

> sarvaga - (Sanskrit) spirit, soul, omnipresent.
> 
> * Written for the Tumblr October/Halloween Challenge, but also to set down some of my post-canon thoughts! (As, quite honestly, I don’t see myself writing anything else set post-canon anytime soon!)
> 
> * Devasena’s concerns about Shivu and Avantika are my own, particularly as I had a hard time even trying to pick up non-rebel hobbies that she might enjoy pursuing in peacetime. Truthfully, other than Shivu, her only other distraction from her mission is that scene where she lets the fish in the river nibble on her fingers, so I ran with that.
> 
> *Amarendra’s spirit remaining and communicating with imprisoned Devasena over those twenty-five years is a headcanon you will have to pry out of my hands because the whole thing is Too Sad otherwise. (Surely I’m not the only one!) As is him proving her with updates about Shivu/Mahendra.
> 
> * Finally, I know by convention I translate most dialogue into English, but I kept Amarendra’s words to Shivu as his penultimate line of dialogue in canon both for the shout-out and because a translation doesn’t really convey the double meaning of “Take care of _my_ mother” (as said to Kattappa in canon) and “Take care of _your_ mother” (as said to Shivu here).


End file.
